Aggregated News
Egg donation offers thousands of U.S. couples the opportunity to start a family, enabling them to carry a child when their own eggs cannot be used. However, while the process brings joy to so many new parents, the egg donation industry has a dark side.
In her new book, Eggonomics, medical anthropologist Diane Tober lifts the lid on the rarely told reality of egg donation.
"When I first started conducting research with egg donors, about 10 years ago, I was shocked by how little information most donors had about potential risks and benefits," Tober told Newsweek. "I was also stunned to hear from so many of them who had had some pretty awful unanticipated side effects."
Many of the donors she spoke to had been told by their agencies and clinics that the risks were "less than 1 percent." However, when Tober scoured through the scientific literature, this statistic was nowhere to be seen.
"In fact, the few articles that had been published found that immediate complications, for example for a common side effect known as ovarian hyperstimulation...